


The Barmaid and the Boy from Cokeworth

by Corylea (WeirdLittleStories)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Birthday gift for MyWitch, EWE, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Snape Lives, Way too talky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:27:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28739484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeirdLittleStories/pseuds/Corylea
Summary: Madam Rosmerta describes how she came to appreciate Severus Snape ... then came to do more than appreciate him.A birthday gift forMyWitch
Relationships: Madam Rosmerta/Severus Snape
Comments: 12
Kudos: 5





	The Barmaid and the Boy from Cokeworth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MyWitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyWitch/gifts).



* * *

**The Barmaid and the Boy from Cokeworth  
  
by Corylea for [MyWitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyWitch)**

  
  


I've seen all kinds of people come and go in my time tending bar at The Three Broomsticks, and by "people," I don't just mean humans. Goblins are obviously people, and house elves, and centaurs, and well, if it can talk and isn't an enchanted mirror or something, it's a person to me.  
  
You have to get good at sizing people up in my position, and the bartender who can't tell the difference between someone who's just blowing off steam and someone who's spoiling for a fight is a bartender who's asking to have her pub smashed up. I've seen people fall in love over one of my butterbeers, seen plots hatched and plots foiled, seen people at their best and at their worst. There isn't much that can surprise an experienced bartender, is what I'm saying, but somehow Severus Snape was an exception to everything I thought I knew.  
  
I was only a few years older than he was, so I was just a girl of eighteen the first time I served him. I noticed him right away because he was the only boy of his age who didn't try to look down my blouse. But no, Severus only had eyes for a redheaded girl his own age. A lot of the Hogwarts boys who came into my pub had crushes on their classmates, but they still had enough interest left over to ogle me when I served them. But Severus stared at that redheaded girl with an intensity that I'd never seen in a boy his age. I was young enough myself that I was still developing my knowledge of people and my nose for trouble, but that kind of intensity, in somebody that young, well, even when I was young and inexperienced, that caught my attention.  
  
He didn't seem to mean her any harm, though. When one of her friends called her by name, I heard she was called Lily, and back then, I didn't know what was going on between Severus and Lily, but he looked completely gone on her to me, and that's not something you usually see in a boy of sixteen.  
  
That was enough to rouse my curiosity, and I kept an eye on him whenever he came in. He generally sat with Avery and Mulciber, nasty boys who were a challenge to wait on, and who I thought he didn't really belong with. Oh, he wasn't a pleasant boy, by any means, but I could tell by the way he spoke to me that he was aware that barmaids were actual people, which was more than I could say for his buddies. The hoity-toityness the others had was theirs from birth, but his ... you could tell he had to _try_ to be hoity-toity, which meant his background was more like mine than theirs.  
  
I've seen a lot of people try to better themselves, and the ones who did it right did it by lifting themselves up, not by pushing other people down. I felt disappointed in him for hanging out with the kind of folks who want to push other people down, as if I'd had any right to expect him to behave well. I should know better than to expect good behavior from any sixteen-year-old boy — they were all hooligans at that age, wanting to be men but not yet knowing how, and mistaking rudeness for toughness or roughness for strength. He'd seemed different than the others, though, and silly though it was, I was disappointed.  
  
I didn't see Severus during most of the First Wizarding War, and that was just as well, since I knew which side he'd joined. But right after the war, he and Dumbledore came to The Three Broomsticks during the busiest part of the day, sat down together, and talked like friends. I didn't usually see much of Dumbledore — Hogwarts had house elves, after all, so he didn't need to come to a pub for any kind of food or drink he might want — so it was clear the headmaster had come to my pub to make a statement. He was being SEEN with Severus Snape, to make the point that he trusted him.  
  
By that point, of course, we all knew who Lily Evans Potter was — the mother of The Boy Who Lived — and we all knew who had killed her. I wondered if that had something to do with why Severus and Dumbledore were so cozy right now. People were saying he'd been a double agent who'd spied on Voldemort for Dumbledore, and if he had, I thought I might know why. I'd have thought better of Severus if he'd been a double agent from the beginning and had only joined Voldemort to spy for the good guys, but I remembered all those times I saw him hanging out with Avery and Mulciber, and I was pretty sure he'd been a real Death Eater in the beginning.  
  
The war was over, though, and the proprietor of a pub can't afford to be fussy about who she serves. The most serious bad guys were in Azkaban, so I could hold my nose and serve the rest.  
  
Hogwarts professors did occasionally come to my pub, sometimes to see friends from the village, sometimes because they were tired of children and wanted a more adult atmosphere. It wasn't all that often, though, so it was surprising when, right after he first started teaching at the school, Severus began coming here for dinner once a week.  
  
He was standoffish at first; I think maybe because he wasn't entirely sure of his welcome. If I'd thought he was slumming, I'd have been cold to him, but it was clear that he relished the food I served him, so I gave him the same warmth I gave to any regular customer. While I hadn't quite forgiven him for joining the Death Eaters, it took a lot of guts to spy for the good guys while still pretending to be a bad guy, and I couldn't help but admire that.  
  
Most male customers talked to my tits instead of my face, and most female customers made their envy of my appearance clear. I had a huge number of acquaintances but not many real friends, and the fact was, I was lonely. Oh, almost everybody liked me, and a lot of people came to my pub because I was good at creating an atmosphere where people could relax and have fun. I had people around me all day every day. It was also true that I could have a man in my bed whenever I wanted one, and that was more than some women could say. But while I'd take a guy to bed from time to time, the truth was the experience was usually rather empty. The men didn't really want ME; the good ones wanted "good ole Madam Rosmerta, always friendly," and the worse ones wanted my tits or my face or my arse. I wanted to tell all those envious women that I'd trade what I looked like in a red-hot minute for a man who loved me for who I was.  
  
About a month after he started coming for dinner once a week, Severus complimented my stew and told me it reminded him of the stew his mother used to make. He looked me in the face when he said it, and I was pretty sure he meant it, because there was nothing flirtatious about his manner. I've been hit on so many times, I think I can probably tell a guy is going to hit on me before HE knows he's going to, and Severus was just complimenting my skills as a cook.  
  
Well, it WAS good stew, if I do say so myself, but it was funny, being complimented for STEW, when he had house elves making him fabulous meals anytime he wanted them. I figured I'd guessed right, though, back when I first met him and thought his background was more like mine than like those rich friends of his. He didn't come from pheasant under glass; he came from stew, so The Three Broomsticks probably felt more like what he was used to than The Great Hall did. I wondered if he was as lonely up there surrounded by people as I was down here surrounded by people. Funny how you can have people all around you and still feel alone.  
  
After that, I started not just delivering the stew and going about my business when Severus came in; I stayed for a moment and chatted. He had a skittish look about him, as if he didn't trust anybody, and I guess it'd be hard to relax if he'd been a double agent in the war. I've never been one, but I'd guess "Trust nobody" would be the #1 rule in a position like that. So I didn't stay and chat for very long at first, just long enough to let him know that my conversation was available if he wanted it.  
  
It took a month or two, but I guess he eventually decided that I wasn't playing some sort of game, and he started chatting back. We talked about quiddich at first — the one thing anybody in wizarding Britain can be sure to talk about — and it turned out he was pretty knowledgeable about the game. We talked about a Keeper I admired and a Beater he thought was underrated, and it would have seemed like nothing to anybody else, but to us it was a big deal. I was talking with a man who was listening to my opinions, and not pretending to listen, the better to get a chance to see what was under my skirt, but actually listening and paying attention, and thinking about what I was saying.  
  
From him, I caught a sense of relief, though I didn't know for awhile what he was so relieved about. I thought at first that it was about the war, but no, he told me later that when he was at Hogwarts, he was constantly aware of being the youngest professor there by more than a decade and constantly aware of being from a working-class background. He felt as if he constantly had to display his intelligence and learning, to prove that he belonged here, and I felt sad for him, because while I was a bit lonely, myself, I never had to prove myself at work. I ran a great pub, and everybody knew it, but then, I wasn't trying to change classes. The upper classes had more and better STUFF, but they didn't seem any happier to me, so trying to join them never seemed worth it to me. For Severus, though, he had a hungry mind, and he belonged with the professors, for all that it seemed like it might take both him and them awhile to realize that.  
  
That was the start of our friendship, but once I realized what an interesting man Severus was, the more time I wanted to spend with him, and once he realized that I really did want to be friends and wasn't just being _professionally_ friendly, the more time he spent with me. We talked about everything, and I heard things about him that I'm not sure even Dumbledore knew. And I told Severus things about myself that I hadn't even realized I thought or felt until I heard myself saying them. It's funny, isn't it, how we come to know ourselves best by sharing that self with another? One of the mysteries of being human, I guess.  
  
We were friends for a couple of years before I decided to turn our friendship sexual. A close friend — especially a close male friend — was such a rare thing for me that I didn't want to take the chance to mess it up at first. But I found it harder and harder to take a random man to my bed, and I realized that it felt as if I were cheating on Severus. I was ready to curse my heart, because it looked like it had gone and fallen in love with him, but he'd never made it a secret that he loved Lily and always would. I might love him, but I doubted that he could or would love me back. Still, I knew he valued me, and most men desired me. I thought sleeping together as friends would still be a deeper relationship than any I'd managed up till now.  
  
I'd learned enough of him by this point that I didn't try to flirt with him or hint around or manipulate him into being the one to proposition me. I told him straightforwardly that I was very fond of him and wanted him in my bed. He told me that he had not much sexual experience but was a fast learner, and if I could put up with his being clumsy for a time or two, he would learn to please me. I had trouble saying anything but "Awwww," after that, but I knew he'd hate that, so I suppressed it, and I did eventually manage to say his offer sounded good to me.  
  
We went to bed, and he studied my body with the single-minded intensity of a man who expected to have to pass an examination afterwards. I reminded myself that he'd been first a Death Eater, then a double agent, and was now a working-class member of the professional class, so grimly working was what he knew how to do. The intensity was pretty sexy, but the grimness wasn't, and I did my best to show by example what an affectionate and playful attitude in bed looked like. He turned out to be a much quicker study about my body than he was about a playful attitude, but he eventually managed to at least not be grim. He lightened up more with me than I think he ever had anywhere, and I took it and didn't ask for more. It was clearly a very profound experience for him, and the first time he shook the grimness off, he actually broke down and cried for a moment. I held him and petted his head, and he looked at me with astonishment in his eyes; I guess he thought I'd rag on him for crying.  
  
We had some good times after that. He came to me twice a week and spent most of the summer with me, though he did have things he had to do at Spinner's End for a few weeks every summer. I worried I might be teaching him how to have a relationship so that he could leave me and find a professor that he could share the intellectual stuff with. I said something like that to him once, and he told me that I was the only person in all the world who accepted him exactly as he was, and nothing could be as valuable to him as that was. I was glad to hear it, because the more I knew him, the more I realized that there was actually a rather lovely man underneath the bitterness that he showed to most of the world, and my love for him only grew.  
  
We had half a dozen good years together, then in August of 1991, he came to me after the pub had closed and told me that we had to keep our relationship a secret from now on. He said that Voldemort hadn't completely died when he didn't manage to kill The Boy Who Lived, and Voldemort had gotten strong enough to begin to come back to life. If he returned, Severus would need to be a double agent again, and it was important for both my own safety and Severus' work that no one know that I could be used to hurt him.  
  
I was shocked and horrified that Voldemort was expected to come back, but I was thrilled at hearing that Severus cared enough about me that I could be used to hurt him. I'd known that for years, of course, but I hadn't been sure that HE knew it, and it meant a lot to me for him to say it aloud. We'd have to see one another only in secret, which meant we couldn't spend summers together anymore, and he could come during the school year only after the pub closed and in secret. I didn't like the idea, but people have to make sacrifices during a war, and it looked as if a new war had started without most people realizing it yet. And certainly the last thing I wanted was to be tortured by Voldemort, either for anything he might think I knew about Severus or even just to motivate Severus to perform for his old master. I agreed to have a public "breakup" but to continue seeing one another in secret.  
  
The next time Severus came for dinner in the pub, he came during the busiest part of Saturday night, to be sure there'd be lots of people around to see us "break up." He accused me of cheating on him and said that if I wasn't his, then I was nobody, and stormed out of the pub after throwing the price of his dinner on the table. I knew it was all an act, of course, but he was such a good actor that I didn't have to be any kind of actress at all to burst into tears and flee into the back room.  
  
He came to me that night after the pub closed, casting spells to make sure we wouldn't be overheard. He taught me to cast the _Muffliato_ charm before taking me to bed, where he was especially tender, I suppose as a way to make up for being mean to me in public. We agreed that he would come to me via floo once a week after the pub closed. We both wanted to see one another more often, but he thought his duties would be increasing, since he'd need to work as a professor AND pretend to be a loyal Death Eater AND work for the good guys. Even I realized that he wouldn't have much time or energy for me, with all that going on, but I also realized that he would need me more than ever, as a source of support, as a way of keeping his spirits up, and as a way of relieving some of the stress he'd undoubtedly be under.  
  
I saw him faithfully once a week during the next four years, and while I despised the secrecy and wished for more of him, things weren't all that different from what they'd been before. But then Voldemort came back at the end of the Tri-Wizard Tournament, and Severus told me that Voldemort had gotten so strong that we didn't dare meet, even in secret. I wanted to take the chance, anyway, but Severus refused. I think it was partly fear of Voldemort that kept him away, but I think it was partly that Voldemort's return made him remember Lily. Or maybe it made him remember his duty to Lily. In any case, once the war became active, I was on my own, and it turned out that Severus was right, because who knows what I might have revealed when I was under the _Imperius_ curse, if we'd still been seeing each other.  
  
The war was long and hard and awful, but I'd really rather not go into it all. There are lots of histories of the war, and Hermione Granger has written the one that people say is really definitive, so you can read her if you want to know just how often Death Eaters came to my pub and forced me to serve them and lorded it over all of us.  
  
I fought alongside everyone else from Hogsmeade during the Battle of Hogwarts, and I heard Harry Potter tell the whole world that Severus Snape had been working for the good guys during the entire second war. I was thrilled when Harry killed Voldemort, but only a few minutes later, a house elf came to get me and told me that Former Headmaster Snape had been taken to St. Mungo's, and would I come?  
  
Everybody knows that you can't apparate on the grounds of Hogwarts, but I guess house elves are more powerful than anybody knew — or different, at any rate — because that elf apparated me from Hogwarts to St. Mungo's, directly to Severus' hospital room.  
  
He looked ghastly. He was never what you'd call tanned or healthy-looking, but lying in that bed with two huge puncture wounds in his neck, he looked too pale to be anything but dead. He was breathing, though, and I sat by his bed and held his hand. I had to make sure not to hold it too tight, because I didn't want to hurt him more, but it looked as if he needed someone to hold onto him to make sure he stayed in THIS world and didn't go onto the next.  
  
The nurses brought me food and a cot to sleep on without my even having to explain anything. I don't know who had told them that I was Severus' next of kin, or how that person had even known we were close, but I guess house elves know everything. I was told later that the same house elf who'd come to get me had taken Severus from the Shrieking Shack and brought him to St. Mungo's. Evidently Severus still had a headmaster's connection to the resources of Hogwarts Castle, even though the elves called him FORMER Headmaster Snape, and they'd known he was dying and come to fetch him right away.  
  
Blood-replenishing potion can do a lot, and so can the various other kinds of healing magic, but Nagini's venom was powerful stuff. It was lucky for Severus that the staff at St. Mungo's had already developed an antidote to Nagini's venom to cure Arthur Weasley, because Severus might not have survived if they hadn't had the antidote handy. As it was, he opened his eyes the day after the attack and smiled at me. He was still weak, of course, and the healers wanted him to stay in hospital for a week to regain his strength, but it was clear that he would be all right. He told me to go back to my pub, because he was a terrible patient, and he didn't want our first interactions after three years apart to be me seeing him weak and cranky. I suppose a lot of people would have argued with him, but I knew him well enough to realize that he meant it, so I went home.  
  
It was good I did, because our community needed a place to gather and to celebrate. We'd lost a lot of good people, so there was mourning, but Voldemort was dead — for good, this time — and even the too-long list of those we'd lost couldn't cover up how relieved we all were that he was dead, and we were not. My pub was full to bursting, and people drank, and they sang, and they cried, and I was busy enough to need a dozen hands, between serving drinks and patting backs and drying tears.  
  
The celebration went on for days. People came and went, so it wasn't the same crowd the whole time, but no one wanted to be in their own house with just themselves or their family. This was a time for us to be a community again, after Voldemort had tried to tear us apart, and people were so happy and relieved that I had to take on several helpers for those few days, to get everybody served. I think part of what was keeping them in my pub instead of in their own houses was that nobody quite believed that Voldemort was really gone, so they needed other people around them, so they could all tell each other that he was dead, really dead, dead for all time.  
  
The party finally wound down after four or five days, and I got to rest up from keeping the pub running around the clock for all that time. And by the time I was rested up from the postwar celebration, Severus was out of the hospital.  
  
He saw Harry Potter first, of course, and no one but he and Harry and Hermione know exactly what they said to one another. But I think he finally saw The Boy Who Lived as LILY'S son and and not as James', and well, that made all the difference, didn't it?  
  
As soon as he was done with Harry, Severus came to me. We hugged one another, and feeling him so warm and solid and alive was the final thing I needed, to tell me that the war was over, and we had won. I was shocked, though, when Severus went down on one knee and looked up at me.  
  
"Until Voldemort was dead, I owed it to Lily to keep her in the forefront of my mind, to keep my love for her burning as the fuel that would get me through the war and ensure that her murderer paid for his crimes. But now that murderer is dead, and my debt is discharged, and my heart is my own, to give as I see fit. Rosmerta, I would give my heart to you. Will you take it? Take me? And take my hand, in marriage?"  
  
I was so shocked, I wasn't sure what to say. I hadn't thought he'd ever love me back; I hadn't realized until then that he couldn't LET himself love me back if he wanted to help catch Lily's murderer. I wished I had the words to be as eloquent as he was, but I was just a barmaid who liked watching people and thinking about them, not any kind of professor. Finally, I simply nodded, and I guess that was enough, because he jumped up and threw his arms around me and squeezed me as if that venom had made him a snake himself.  
  
I did say, didn't I, that Severus Snape was an exception to everything I thought I knew?  
  
We got married, of course, and I think we're going to live happily ever after. We're going to _try,_ at any rate, and I think maybe we deserve it.  
  


* * *

**Author's Note:**

>  **1.** This story was written as a birthday gift for MyWitch. Although I loved the Harry Potter books, HP isn't my primary fandom, so please forgive me for any errors in the story. My mind is constantly full of Star Trek, so Harry Potter stories come hard to me, and I apologize if this story isn't very good.
> 
> Also, MyWitch's OTP is Snape/Rosmerta, which is why I tried to write that, but my Harry Potter ships are Hermione/Harry, Hermione/Luna, and Hermione/Minerva, so I'm writing quite far out of my comfort zone here. :-)
> 
>  **2.** When Rosmerta says that she's "just a barmaid," this is ROSMERTA speaking, not me. I've written Rosmerta as someone who has a lot of emotional intelligence and who puts that intelligence to good use in her role as the proprietor of The Three Broomsticks (and lover of Severus Snape). So excellent of a bartender as she has to be a good natural psychologist, and so she is. :-)
> 
>  **3.** Everything Harry Potter belongs to the illustrious Ms. Rowling. I'm just a fan playing in the sandbox that she designed, built and owns, and I make no money from the strange little stories that I write.
> 
>  **4.** I have a chronic illness that leaves me non-functional most of the time, which means that I am not always able to reply to comments. I do read them all with great attention, though, and I do cherish every single one of them, even when my health doesn't permit me to reply. I apologize for being so limited in what I can do.
> 
>  **5.** [MyWitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyWitch) has posted lots of wonderful art; please go wish her a happy birthday ... and enjoy the fabulous things she's drawn.
> 
>  **6.** Thanks for reading! If you liked anything about this story, I'd love to hear what you enjoyed.


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